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World Festival highlights city’s international population

The 25th annual Americana Community Center World Festival, a party with foods, crafts and performances from all over the world, will be held from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday at the Iroquois Amphitheater.

The Americana Community Center World Festival started out as a block party held in various places — the center itself, a soccer field, a ValuMarket parking lot.

But as Louisville’s international population expanded, so did the annual event, which made its debut in 1990.

Back then, the city’s immigrant population was no more than 15,000, said Americana executive director Edgardo Mansilla. Now, nearly 40,000 Jefferson County residents were born in a different country, according to the most recent U.S. Census data.

This year’s festival, which will take place Saturday at Iroquois Amphitheater, will be a celebration of Louisville’s diversity, Mansilla said. There will be performances of all sorts — Nepali dancers, African drummers, Appalachian folk musicians and more — as well as foods and crafts from all over the world.

“We have a little bit of everything, and we tried to get as much of everything as we possibly could ... so that all the cultures would be celebrated,” said Heather Bruner, Americana’s grants and development manager and one of the festival’s organizers.

Bassist Steve Loomis’ Afrobeat group, The Afrophysicists, has been a staple of the Americana World Festival for years, and he said the band’s music — which has Nigerian roots and is like funk and soul infused with African percussion — is a “perfect fit” for the festival.

“They’re trying to showcase all the different styles of music from different cultures that we’ve got right here in the city,” Loomis said. “We’re a good example of that, but they get lots of similar things ... it’s different stuff than you would hear around town generally.”

The free event will also have a kids’ zone with face-painting, crafts and games until 7 p.m.

The city’s growing international population, Bruner said, can largely be attributed to its several well-established refugee services based in Louisville, which the United Nations has classified as a preferred site for refugee relocation.

But immigrants are also attracted to the city’s sense of security and relatively low cost of living, Mansilla said.

Americana provides services like coaching and English classes for immigrants to bridge the gap between “the culture of their native countries and American culture,” Bruner said. The nonprofit agency works closely with refugee assistance programs, such as Kentucky Refugee Ministries and Catholic Charities.

Americana assists immigrants from 98 countries who live across 37 local ZIP codes, Mansilla said. He hopes the festival will be a way to represent “the diversity that exists in Louisville today,” and not just the Beechmont neighborhood surrounding the Americana Community Center, where many immigrants choose to live.

“This is one of the realities of Lousville,” he said. “We are international and are spread out all over the city.”

Reporter Kirsten Clark can be reached at (502) 582-4144 or on Twitter by following @kirstenlmclark.

Americana Community Center World Festival

What: A festival with foods, crafts and performances from all over the world